


The Cabin

by sororexitium



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fox Stiles, Grief/Mourning, Healing, M/M, Moving On, Slow Build, The Author Regrets Nothing, but it's kind of hinted at, careless behavior, he doesn't really say it, maybe a little bit of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 17:58:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12513028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sororexitium/pseuds/sororexitium
Summary: Derek sees the fox for the first time one late winter evening, just as the sun is setting over the tree line and the colors of the sky light up in pale purples, brilliant oranges, and burning reds.It stands out vividly against the periwinkle shadowed snow that dusts the porch, the little predator’s red fur illuminated golds and auburns by the sun with a luminous halo around its black tipped ears. Derek watches it through the window for several minutes, the way its plush tail swishes back and forth, sweeping away the snow. Every so often the head will turn and the fading sun will light up the small fox’s eyes, amber glowing with preternatural focus and intelligence, even for a fox.





	The Cabin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redshoemafia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redshoemafia/gifts).



He doesn’t know what draws him back to this plot of land out of all the other’s his family owned. There’s nothing particularly interesting about it. The cabin on it is a little run down and it’s honestly more of a bitch to get it up and running than if he’d gone to their lake house, or the summer home they had in Maine.

He probably would have been better off even getting his own place. He had the money for it. He had all the money in the world and nothing that he really wanted to spend it on. This place is as good as anywhere else to live and it’s removed from most other people. The closest town is twenty minutes away and his closest neighbor is far enough away the he can’t even see them.

When he steps out of the car, the autumn air is crisp and bracing, the sky is gray and the leaves are all well passed the beautiful stages of senescence. The grass is all dead and bleached, straw-like under his boots where the dirt is unyielding. A howling wind sweeps through the clearing. It makes him shiver a little under the leather jacket on his shoulders.

It’s colder than New York would have been, but in a different way. It’s sharper, digging in deeper. He likes it. It feels punishing, curling under his skin, cutting into his muscles and it’s not even really winter yet.

Derek nods to himself, reaching into the back of the car for his duffle bag.

This place seems just as lonely and uninviting as he feels.

***

He gets electricity and plumbing going out of necessity, but he puts off getting the gas turned on. It means he can’t cook on the stove, or have a hot shower, but he doesn’t care. He has a fireplace and there are more than enough fallen trees around the property to keep him through the winter.

Two windows need replaced, which he does himself. Maybe it’s not the best job that could be done, but it’s enough that no one comes into the cabin and tracks their scents all over the place. He doesn’t like having humans and other creatures smell up his home. He hadn’t for years, but now he staunchly refuses to deal with it.

Derek barely even tolerates going to town.

He only goes once every two weeks, buying all the meat and canned foods he’ll need to survive. He never says hello to the cashier and if one of the patrons needs help, he ignores them. What his uninviting appearance doesn’t cover, his prickly personality definitely does.

The town eventually learns to just stop talking to him.

***

His first full moon on the property is a nightmare. He can barely keep control of himself, his claws slipping out, his eyes filtering between their usual green and the electric blue he hates so damn much. He doesn’t want to go outside for fear the animal will take over without his consent.

Derek has known since day one that the first moon after losing Laura, the very last of his pack, the last of his family, would be unbearable, but this is worse than anything he had been imagining. Holding onto his rage only seems to make it worse. His emotions are in an uproar and he knows he’s spiraling.

He wants to chain himself up, just to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, but he knows he can’t. There’s no one here to help him get into or out of them. Of course, he can’t very well lock himself up, because then he’ll know how to get out of whatever bindings he could manage to trap himself in.

In the end, he goes down to the basement and sits against the far corner, dark and dusty, claws digging into his palms as his muscles shift between the wolf and the human.

***

Winter comes to his washed out patch of the world without any subtlety. One morning, the autumn chill snaps at him, and the next, the world is frozen and gray.

Derek finally breaks down and has his gas turned on, because otherwise he’ll test the boundaries on werewolf immunity. He’s already tested so many other things since coming to the cabin. Eventually the culmination of all of them will likely put him into an early grave.

Unsurprisingly, the thought doesn’t really bother him.

He doesn’t really have much to hold him here. The very last piece that tied him down is gone. He’d felt that connection snap even over the breadth of the entire country. He’d felt it as though he were right next to her. He’d heard her howl of pain and outrage, the cry of remorse, and the warning she’d sent to him just before her life extinguished.

No, he doesn’t really care about the early grave, but being frozen to death seems a little too much like going cold in an empty woods in California.

***

Derek sees the fox for the first time one late winter evening, just as the sun is setting over the tree line and the colors of the sky light up in pale purples, brilliant oranges, and burning reds.

It stands out vividly against the periwinkle shadowed snow that dusts the porch, the little predator’s red fur illuminated golds and auburns by the sun with a luminous halo around its black tipped ears. Derek watches it through the window for several minutes, the way its plush tail swishes back and forth, sweeping away the snow. Every so often the head will turn and the fading sun will light up the small fox’s eyes, amber glowing with preternatural focus and intelligence, even for a fox.

The little thing also seems antsy in its own way, fidgety as it shifts from one forepaw to the other. Derek can’t quite put his finger on what makes him think that, but something about the fox is just…restless. It’s almost as if it wants to move, but the snow that covers Derek’s land keeps him at bay.

Derek frowns and shakes his head, letting the curtain drop back to where it had been hanging before he heard the delicate footsteps up the front steps.

It’s just a fox. They’re around these parts.

There’s nothing special about it.

There’s nothing special about anything anymore.

***

The fox is gone the next day, when he steps out to shovel his car out of the snow, which is no less than what he suspected.

What he’s vaguely shocked by is the fact that there’s no trace of the fox having been there. There’s no disturbance in the snow on his porch and there are no tracks to denote which way the fox had gone after it left the porch. If he weren’t so sure of himself, he might have thought he dreamed it. He knows better than to think like that though.

He doesn’t have dreams like that.

Not to mention the soft scent that lingers in the air, wet and earthy with an enigmatic salty bitter undertone that teases at his senses but could be just about anything.

He could probably follow it, but it doesn’t really matter to him. It was just a forest animal taking a moment’s reprieve from the snow on the ground. He didn’t need to worry about it.

What he needed to worry about was getting supplies before the next snow storm hit in a few days.

***

Derek’s cabin has a decayed feeling to it. No one’s been here since before the fire destroyed his life so many years ago. He thinks the last time he remembers the pack coming here was Christmas two years before everyone died. It had been hectic and warm. There’d been a tree in the corner, a real one that made the entire first floor smell like pine, over decorated branches sagging with ornaments.

The only thing in the corner now is cobwebs that he doesn’t care to clean up, dusty and floating in the still air, strung between washed out walls and clinging to water stained ceilings. The floors are cluttered with dirt and dried out leaves that blow in when he brings in the groceries, dust footprints tracking between rooms of the first floor without care. 

The cabin is cold and dreary because he hardly ever bothers with heat and he hasn’t felt like stoking the fire as the holidays come up on him. It’s only bare bulbs in the ceiling illuminating the living room when the sun goes down, casting everything it a too bright glare. It highlights how dingy and run down everything in this place has become.

At night, he sleeps on the old couch with a moth-eaten blanket slung over his shoulders, silence all around him, in his head, and in his heart.

***

One full moon, after so many months of trying to hold on, Derek gives up control and tears into the woods, shirtless, no shoes. His feet are freezing, the snow on the ground unforgiving, biting into his skin with every stomp of his feet into the soft slush. The wind whips around him and blizzard rages, dampening his senses, but not enough to disorient him.

Derek’s control on the wolf is tentative at best, but he has enough of himself that he doesn’t wander towards the town and he makes sure to stay on his own property. He’s not really in the mood to be shot. In his current state of mind, he might attack, and the last thing he wants is to bring down hunters on his head.

So he runs, clawing trees, slashing branches, snarling at anything that moves.

It feels so good. Too good.

He knows he’s walking a dangerous path, letting his anger and aggression out this way. He knows how easily he could become addicted to it. He knows how much he wants to just let go of all the pain and regret, the guilt that’s been burned into his soul. It would be so much easier to be the wolf.

There’s a snap behind him and he turns around, snarling.

The fox doesn’t move.

It stares at him with those amber eyes that seem too intelligent.

***

When next Derek wakes, he’s tucked into his couch and there’s a lingering scent of animal around the house. Animal that isn’t him, with salty bitter undertones.

He looks around, confused, wondering if maybe he’d let something in.

The fox, he remembers. It’s vague, but there. He’d run into the fox. It had been sitting on a rock, looking at him steadily. He remembers it swishing the plume of its tail across the surface, clearing the snow from it as it fell.

Had he let it in when he stumbled back? Why had he stumbled back?

Derek remembers clearly being willing to give himself over to the wolf.

He pulls his blanket away, only then realizing that it’s not his regular moth eaten blanket. It’s something cleaner, though definitely not new. He recognizes it after a moment as his mother and father’s green quilt from their room upstairs. 

He tosses it away from him in shock, scrambling away from it with wide eyes. He looks over to the staircase, trying to figure out why he would have gone up there when he never, ever has before.

But the dust on the wooden steps is undisturbed.

***

The day he lets the fox in is the day the weather predicts three feet of snow. It’s been coming down in white sheets and Derek has been watching it from his couch, wrapped up in the quilt that had mysteriously ended up downstairs. He thinks maybe it should worry him more, but it is warmer…and when it’s wrapped around his shoulders, he feels like his parents are close to him.

Not to mention he still isn’t quite ready to go upstairs, and he has to if he wants to put the quilt back.

He’s pulling it over his shoulder when the lithe orange creature hops up onto his porch, scooting away from the storm. It catches Derek’s attention, being the only colorful thing around the cabin as far as the eye can see. Not only that, but it scoots as close to the walls as possible, like it’s trying to hunch away from the wind and snow.

Derek stands from his seat, slipping closer to the window to see it hunkered down low, tail over its nose. Even from the window, Derek can tell that it’s shivering, shudders going through its body as the zero degree weather batters against its fur. The little thing is curled as tightly as possible, trying to preserve body heat.

Logically, he knows that it’s a wild animal, the he shouldn’t let it into the cabin.

Then again, he’s not exactly much better.

He opens the door.

Some part of him expects the animal to run off before he can make it known that he’s offering shelter from the storm. After all, the fox is a wild animal and most woodland creatures are prone to skittish behavior. Another part however, is completely unsurprised when the little beast slips in before the door is even fully open, shaking itself of snow and cold before going to the musty rug by the fire and curling up in a ball.

And just like that, Derek has a roommate.

***

He discovers the fox is male fairly quickly.

He also finds out that foxes live up to their reputation, or this one does at the very least. This fox is very mischievous, paying no attention any of the growling Derek does as he wanders through the house, sniffing at everything, knocking over boxes, hopping onto counters with ease and agility, and sneaking food from Derek’s dinner plate when Derek deigns to eat and isn’t looking.

The tod also has a life of his own apparently. While he stays in the house with Derek quite a bit, he also demands to go outside on some of the nicer days. He leaves when Derek does, heading to the woods while Derek makes his way to town for his biweekly run that now includes a little extra meat for his new interloper.

For the most part though, the fox just lives with him.

Derek tries not to think of it as anything other than another animal. It’s not his pet. He doesn’t really feed it all that often, and the bedding he’s claimed wasn’t laid down by Derek, specifically. Derek feels no special attachment to it.

It’s a wild animal.

He just happens to cohabitate with Derek.

***

When the next full moon waxes, he tries to lock himself in the basement, letting the tod out into the open doors.

It turns around, head tilted to the side, like it’s confused as to why Derek is closing the door behind it. Derek doesn’t think too hard on it, already trying to tell himself that he’s not going to have another setback like last month. He’s going to stay in the cabin and work on his control.

He does a good job for the most part, breathing as evenly as possible as the moon tugs him closer to the edge.

It’s just that his claws don’t retract through the night.

The next morning, he goes out to get some more wood from the rack and he finds the little fox curled up next to the basement window, fast asleep.

***

The one time he leaves the tod in the cabin, Derek comes back with groceries to find the couch torn to shreds, the curtains pulled down, and the fox on the pillow Derek had been using to prop his head up when he slept. His reaction is instant, too. He drops his bags and snarls at the little beast so ferociously that he jumps up and high tails it out of Derek’s vicinity.

Which happens to be right up the stairs.

Usually that would be a smart move, because Derek, in general, does not go upstairs. But the tod has just destroyed the place he sleeps and god only knows what else. He knows the thing is a wild animal, but it’s never done anything like this and if it’s going to tear everything up, it can live outside and make its own den!

He stomps up the stairs, doing nothing to remain quiet and giving away his position too easily. Dust comes up in plumes under his boots, the smell of must and neglect meeting his nose, making his face wrinkle. It’s easily ignored in favor of finding the tod though.

All the rooms up here should have their doors closed so it shouldn’t be too difficult. He’ll corner the little mongrel in the hall and get it the hell out of the cabin. He doesn’t even know why he let him in at all.

When he clears the landing though, the fox isn’t in the hall directly in front of him, and he follows the delicate footprints to the hall on the left, more dust and debris swirling into the air as he goes. He turns the corner where four more bedrooms are waiting, and he sees where the tod has escaped into a room that is impossibly open.

His old room.

He blinks as he turns to corner into it, mouth falling open and anger slipping into awe.

It’s just like he left it, with only a thick layer of dust covering everything.

And the scent of wet earth trailing under the bed.

He feels like his breath has been punched out of him and as he takes everything in, he finds…it’s not nearly as tragic up here as he had once thought. He doesn’t crumble in despair to see something that still stands the way it used to be before. There are memories up here, most of the happy. They wrap around him, almost like the blanket that had shown up mysteriously down stairs.

He wanders over to his old nightstand, pulling the old photo off the top so he can rub the dust off on his shirt and there they are. It’s his mom and dad with their arms wrapped around the three kids. They’re all making ridiculous faces and holding each other so tight…

An hour later, he sighs, leaning back against the creaky mattress. He’s gone through every drawer, all of the boxes in his closet, pulled all the old things out from under the bed, noting that the tod is always as far away from him as possible. He’s found all the old notes, pictures, and gifts he’d stashed away last and he’d even found himself smiling.

Derek drums on the bed and stares at the cobwebbed ceiling.

“Alright, come on out,” he says and he realizes that this might be the first time he’s spoken in months. Of course it would be to a fox. “I’m sorry I got mad. But if you do that again, I’m tossing you out without a second’s hesitation.”

He can hear the small predator scurrying under the bed, and the next thing he knows his small roommate is curled up against his side.

***

Derek cleans out his old room over the course of the next couple of days, the window open to help clear the scent of disuse. He wipes everything down, packages up some of his old things, and takes boxes out to the storage shack behind the cabin. He knows he’ll never have use for most of it again, but he’s not ready to get rid of it just yet.

He goes out and rents a trailer, and locks the fox out of the cabin because that’s what the little shit deserves after destroying his couch. He heads into town and actually talks to someone at the furniture store, picking out another couch and a new mattress set, making sure that they’re both in stock before he commits to the idea of one.

Honestly, he wouldn’t care if the couch was paisley patterned so long as he could get it loaded on his trailer.

It doesn’t come to that, thankfully, but he would have.

Instead, he comes home with a memory foam topped mattress and a leather couch that’s probably going to stick out like a sore thumb in the cabin. They’ll be the most up to date things he has in there, but they’ll be comfortable. He thinks a little bit of comfort wouldn’t kill him.

If nothing else, he can use the fox as an excuse.

***

He has to make a run back to town later for a new lamp when he smashes his old one putting in the new mattress set. While he’s out he ends up buying new sheets and curtains for his room and the living room and even a small rug for his bedside.

It’s all in a dark green that matches the blanket he’s been using for the last several weeks.

It matches the blanket he makes his bed with that evening before he goes to sleep.

The tod looks suspiciously pleased with this as it sweeps its fluffy tail across the freshly cleaned wood floors.

***

Several weeks later, Derek comes up the stairs, intent on reading one of the older books he found. It had been lying around while he was straightening up the living room, trying to make it look a little more presentable now that he had a new couch and some new curtains. When he’d been going through the blanket chest, he’d found it tucked away at the bottom, probably by accident or maybe a present someone forgot to wrap.

Either way, he takes it with him and the fox follows up the steps and into the room, promptly making itself at home on the left side of the bed.

Derek stares at him, mouth and brows both pulling into a frown, not that the fox seems to mind. In fact, those too intelligent amber eyes stare up at him questioningly, as if wondering what was taking so long for Derek to get in bed. He scowls even more at that.

“Get out,” he grouses. The tod only curls up tighter with a huff of satisfaction. Shaking his head, he moves over to the left side of the bed, picking up the little body and dropping it gently on the floor. “I haven’t slept with anyone in my bed since my last slumber party. I’m not about to change that now.”

He gets glared at for that, but he doesn’t mind.

No, he doesn’t mind at all.

***

“Will you stop trying to steal my bacon?”

It’s amazing the amount of mornings he says that now.

Used to be he didn’t even eat breakfast, and to be completely honest, he’s not sure why he’s started now. He guesses it gives him something to do in the morning instead of wallowing on the couch or in his bed. As winter fades away, he starts going out in the morning for a run around the property, and then he comes back for a shower and cooks bacon and eggs.

And the damn fox tries to pilfer as much bacon as he can.

Derek has tried flashing his eyes at the heinous creature, but all it’s gotten him so far is an interested head tilt and a shuffle closer.

He’s given up by now and goes for the old fashioned method of pushing the fox away from his plate while he eats on the couch, keeping his elbow out to fend off further advances. The tod never seems deterred by it, finding new and ingenious ways to get around him.

Today, he hops up on the back of the couch and moves around to Derek’s other side. Unfortunately for him, Derek has caught on to his plan and has his fork pointed threateningly at his nose. “Don’t even think about it.”

The tod licks the fork and Derek rolls his eyes, tearing half of his last piece off and giving it to the monster.

***

It hits Derek every once in a while that he’s a hermit who lives alone in a cabin in the woods. He’s a werewolf without a pack hiding from his life and the horrors he’s left in his past. He’s a lonely man, barely past twenty, who only speaks to a fox most days.

There’s a part of him that knows exactly how pathetic that is and another part that says maybe he should seek help. He’s well aware that this isn’t healthy, but he’s stopped being so careless with himself and his body since spring started, even with the anniversary of the fire creeping up on him. The cabin almost looks clean even.

He’s trying more.

He’s trying to try more.

Whether or not the tod helps, Derek doesn’t know, but he certainly makes Derek’s days more interesting. He brings a smile to his face every now and then at the very least. That’s a lot more than he’s been able to do in months.

***

The fox has very little regard for personal space. It used to bother Derek, in the beginning, how his little roommate just didn’t pay attention to boundaries. He would hop up onto the couch and curl up next to Derek, follow him into different rooms, jump onto the counter when Derek was cooking. It used to be maddening to Derek.

Now it’s a comforting sort of connection. The earthy rain scent curls into most of his belongings and there’s a small layer of red fur that he constantly sweeps out of the cabin. He shares parts of his meals with the tod, discovering that he likes green beans and fries as much as any red meat. He even shares the couch with the little beast.

The bed is still completely Derek’s though. He’s not budging on that.

Despite the disregard for personal space and probably a lack of self-preservation, it takes Derek a long time to notice the little black spots that disrupt the auburn of his fur. A few spots litter on the right side of his muzzle, a few in an almost pattern across either side of his neck, and then randomly down his back and flank.

Derek finds himself counting them every once in a while, when the fox is spread out across the cushion beside him, head pressed into Derek’s thigh and body stretched out to strategically take up as much space as possible. He traces his fingers between each one, surprised by how soft his fur is and how easily he stays asleep when Derek admittedly starts petting him. He memorizes them over time, finds them over and over again and traces them down to see if the spots go down to his skin.

He smiles when he sees that they do.

***

Derek feels the full moon tugging again as it waxes, but it doesn’t claw as much as it has in the past. The wolf is restless, wants to run and chase and he can feel the itch under his skin to shift, but he takes a deep breath and focuses. He doesn’t even focus on anger like he used to, though that sensation is still there.

He’s not sure what he’s focusing on, really. He doesn’t focus on his grief, ever present as it is. He doesn’t even focus on his self-loathing that burns in the back of his mind like the raging fire that consumed his home so long ago. It isn’t really any emotion.

Honestly, he would have thought controlling himself during the full moon this month would be harder. He’s actively begun cleaning out the cabin, going into rooms he’s ignored for so long and stirring up all of these emotions. Each picture he finds, the trinkets on his mother’s desk, his dad’s baseball memorabilia, all of Laura’s horrible CDs and Cora’s posters…they’re all a burning agony in his chest. It’s an agony he’s becoming addicted to, chasing, because as much as it hurts, it’s laced with all their memories, and it reminds him just how much he loves them all still.

Derek really expected to be an emotional mess and to lock himself in the basement like he does so many other full moons. He expects claws and canines and shifting features snarling at anything that moves.

But he’s not.

He turns to the tod after he’s finished eating his meal and sharing just a little less than half of it with the other creature, both of them tilting their heads at each other, seeming to consider something. After a moment Derek smirks, nodding toward the door.

“Come on. Let’s go for a run.”

***

On one of his biweekly trips to town, he actually stops at a hardware store and picks up some paint for the living room. On another, he considers the merits of a sander so he can refinish the desk that his father had loved so much. During yet another, he buys a few planks of half inch wood so he can build a few quick and dirty shelves for the laundry room.

When he brings it home, usually his small friend is waiting on the porch, sunbathing in the mid-spring sunlight. It’s still pretty chilly, because they live so far north, but compared to the biting winter winds, and the below-freezing temperatures, it’s really nice and more than manageable. It makes it pleasant to work outside with power tools he’d unearthed from the shed and apparently to lounge about on the porch with a smug little grin.

The cabin starts to look a little more lived in, a little less haunted.

It still looks like a recluse lives there with his wild animal of a companion, but it’s…he thinks it’s something his family could respect, even if they didn’t like it, per se.

It still falls just short of living, but he’s not running.

He’s not hiding.

***

Derek looks down at his grocery list, lips tight as he reads it through twice, trying to figure out when he’d added curly fries to it. It isn’t something he remembers adding or even having a particular craving for. Even still, this is his hand writing without a doubt and it says plain as day that he needs curly fries as a side for one of his meals.

He shakes his head at himself, sighing as he looks over to the frozen potato section, looking through the colorful bags to find the curly fries and the hash browns. God only knows where his mind was when he wrote some of this stuff down, but now that he thinks about it, curly fries do sound nice. It will be a nice little treat.

His cart is already full of all his other items, the meats and canned vegetables he’s decided sound good for the week. He’s even thrown in some fresh vegetables so he can try a recipe he found in an old cookbook he’d unearthed from a cabinet in the kitchen. Hell, he’s got spices in the cart this time, and he hasn’t had anything else in the cabin but salt and pepper since he arrived.

He’s looking at his receipt after he’s paid, a habit he doesn’t exactly know when or why he got into, yet does obsessively. His cart is filled with paper bags because he hates dealing with plastic on a physical level and he’s already digging into his pocket for his keys. All in all, he’s distracted and so it makes it easy for the other wolf to startle him.

Derek snaps his head up with a snarl, glaring at the other beta who stumbles back a little like a startled puppy.

It’s more than clear that the other boy is bitten, and he’s obviously not grown into his own. Derek automatically looks around for this alpha, for the wolf that changed him, someone to look out for him. He looks for the alpha so he can get the hell away from him.

These day, though he tries not to think about it, Derek knows all too well he’s an omega. He’s a wolf without a pack. He has no alpha. He’s easy pickings and he doesn’t like the fact that he’s out in town with nothing against his back.

There’s no one that he can see or sense though.

It’s just the boy and a human woman who lingers behind him with worried eyes. In their hands are a stack of flyers easily two inches thick. They have an air of desperation and loss around them and it makes Derek want to recoil because he’s only just managed to wash the worst of that scent out of his clothes. He’s only just learned to navigate his own grief. He’s not prepared to step in someone else’s.

He walks away without a word.

***

“Okay…it says…mix flour into butter and cook to a caramel brown, making sure not to burn…pour milk into mixture, two tablespoons at a time, stirring continuously to create roux…” Derek presses his lips tightly together, willing the instructions to make sense to him the way he has been for the past several seconds. “This is stupid.”

It seems simple enough on paper and when he’d read it, he’d been sure he wouldn’t have a problem. In practice, however, he realizes that he doesn’t have nearly the proper amount of hands. He’s missing at least one, or he’s making this too complicated for himself. He’s sure it’s the latter, but he still curses the former.

This isn’t the first time he’s cursed living on his own. He’s wished a million times when the moon is full or when he’s moving furniture on his own that there could be someone to help him. And now while he’s cooking. He’s never been very good at it. The extent of his skills is cooking meat and opening a can, but he’d wanted to branch out, and apparently that is just never a good thing.

The gentle tap of nails over hardwood floors catches his attention and he looks back to the small fox, with a frown.

“I hope you’re hungry. This may all go to you.”

He’s never seen the fox look more threatened, even going as far as to whine.

***

He sets up the fire pit in the front yard, digging a small divot into the earth that’s just starting to soften up and lining the freshly churned dirt with large rocks he found in the woods.

He doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so intent on having campfire. He has a fire place in the house, after all. But tonight is the first evening where the temperatures have been warm enough to be outside, and before he could think about it too deeply, he was outside making the pit. He’s even bought some hotdogs for the occasion.

The fox isn’t here with him tonight, but Derek’s sure he’ll turn up eventually. That thing has a nose for food. He always shows up when Derek’s about to set down for any of his meals. He’d even come running when the small hidden bag of powdered donuts appeared.

But the evening turns into full night and crescent moon brightens the sky and highlights the stars and his little companion is nowhere to be found. Derek turns onto his back, warmed by the fire and lulled by the sounds of the wood. He counts the stars and watches the planes fly overhead and he falls asleep outside without a care in the world.

When he wakes again the fire is only embers, but he hardly cares about that as he snaps his eyes open and rolls to his feet. His heart is pounding in his ribcage and his nose goes up into the air, sniffing, trying to find his fox’s trail in the air. Derek knows the sounds of an animal in trouble.

He jerks his head to the side when he hears what woke him to begin with, the warning bark of a fox in danger.

Derek is moving before he can fully comprehend his own instincts, running as quickly as he can into the woods, hopping fallen trees and dunking under low hanging branches. His claws are out and his senses sharpen as the wolf comes forward. His fox is in trouble and he has to help. He has to make sure it doesn’t get hurt.

He’s knows he’s close when he hears the tod. The gekkering snarls of a fox in the midst of a fight and the threatening growl of something bigger. A coyote, without doubt.

Breaking through the underbrush, he roars at the scavenger with all the rage he has, moving to stand over his fox, towering over him while he makes it known to the coyote that he is the most dangerous thing in this woods, and it had better leave. Claws and canines out, his eyes glowing, he won’t hesitate to rip this thing apart if it makes one wrong move, because the fox is his.

He’s all Derek has in this world.

The coyote runs.

Derek relaxes marginally, turning to the tod and noticing for the first time that he’s favoring his left forepaw as he stands gingerly. Worse, the scent of blood is heavy in the air. Even with the shadows thrown by the trees and underbrush, the darkening patch of fur along his side.

His heart starts pounding in his chest, fear clouding his head as he picks the little predator up, paying no mind as it snarls and bites.

He has to get it home and patched up.

***

Derek has no idea what he’s doing when he fixes up the tod.

He doesn’t know the best way to inject him with painkillers, but he knows he can’t just let the fox be in pain. When he sets the leg, he’s not sure if he sets in properly. It feels straight when he wraps it, but he’s not a veterinarian. And wrapping his middle, god…Derek has never been squeamish, he’s done terrible things in his time, but seeing the gashes left by teeth left him praying.

There’s no hesitation as he gently scoops the little fox off of his counter and into a clean towel, leaving the bloody water to splash onto the floor without care. The mess is inconsequential and he can deal with it later. All he wants now is for his fox to be comfortable.

That’s why he takes him upstairs and lays him carefully along the left side of his bed, making soothing noises as the tod whines in pain.

Derek strokes his hand over his fur, gently cupping his small skull as he listens to the rapid heartbeat and frantic breathing. He keeps hushing it as he takes his pain away, giving the little predator the relief it deserves and allowing him to slip into sleep. It’s the best Derek can do for him.

He just hopes it’s enough.

***

Morning breaks a day later and Derek has barely slept.

His fox is okay, he thinks. He’s breathing evenly and his heart rate is just a little faster than usual. Derek thinks maybe he’s saved his little friend, but he can’t stop worrying to save his life. 

He doesn’t know when or how he became so attached to the little fox. He hardly noticed it over the last few months, like one moment it was a pest and the next it’s become his anchor. The fox is the only thing that’s keeping him sane it feels like, the only thing that makes getting up bearable and cooking entertaining. Many of the things he did out of necessity, he now does with an auburn companion at his side, curious amber eyes overseeing his every move.

Derek is no stranger to loss and death. They seem to follow him around like a jilted lover that he just can’t shake, snatching away things that become precious to him when he least expects it. Logically, he thinks that maybe losing his fox shouldn’t be as painful as losing all of his family.

But he can’t bear the thought.

***

During late afternoon, Derek is nearly shocked to death when there’s a knock at the door for the first time in all the months he’s lived here. It’s hesitant and quiet, like the person on the other side of the door isn’t really sure if they actually want to knock and gain Derek’s attention. Given his attitude, they should run the opposite direction until they hit the ocean.

He debates with himself whether or not he actually wants to answer it or just wait them out until they leave. He knows he’s going to end up growling at them and likely cementing the idea that he’s a murderous hermit up in the hills, but he doesn’t actually mind. He’s never wanted anyone here. Ever!

Derek stomps over to the door, pulling it open with a sneer and a demanding, “What?!”

It’s the boy from the market. His eyes are wide and golden, and he’s clinging to a piece of paper on his front porch.

“I…I heard you…last night. I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says, unsure at the beginning, but with growing confidence. He’s obviously stubborn and not easily cowed, squaring his jaw and his shoulders as he straightens his spine to his full height which is still two or so inches shorter than Derek.

“I’m fine!” Derek practically bites. “Go away!”

The teenager gives him a pissy look, but he doesn’t move immediately. His fingers play with the edges of the paper, obviously arguing with himself before he thrusts it in Derek’s face. “Have you seen this guy?” he asks quickly. “He’s been missing since winter break and we’ve been looking for him since.”

Derek barely glances at the picture of a boy, buzzed hair and sparkling almond eyes with a smirk that seems all too fragile. He reaches up and snatches it out of his hand, crumpling it without a care in the world. He doesn’t care about a missing boy. Not right now at least. Not when his fox could be dying when Derek can’t do anything about it.

“No.”

“Dude, what the fuck is your problem?!” the boy demands, looking at him with rage in his dark brown eyes.

He’s about to shut the door in the kid’s face so he can go back to fretting on his own and it must show on his face because the other wolf shakes his anger quickly. His eyes widen and he holds up his hands to stop the door before it even moves. He’s panicking.

“What about a fox?” he spits out in a rush. “He…he was bitten by an alpha but…like, he turned into a werefox instead of a werewolf, okay? Maybe you’ve seen a fox around the woods?”

“There are no other weres around here. I would have smelled them,” Derek growls. “Now go away.”

He slams the door in the boy’s face, locking it with finality before turning around and sliding down, putting his head in his hand. Closing his eyes, he listens to the other wolf fidget, shifting his weight between his feet and then walking away. Derek sighs and lets his head fall back, turning it slightly when he smells wet earth and bitter salt.

He frowns at the fox who’s walking on all four paws and looking guilty as shit.

But it couldn’t be. If his tod were a shifter, he would have smelled him…but then again, foxes have always been clever.

“Now would be the time to come clean,” he murmurs to the tod, but it lacks bite seeing as his heart is filling with relief that his companion isn’t dying.

***

The tod naturally turns out to be the same kid from the missing person’s flyer.

Derek really didn’t have a doubt in his mind that it would be. As soon as his fox had come down the stairs, walking on all four legs like his right forepaw had never been broken, he’d figured it out fairly quickly. It only made sense that it would be the boy the other werewolf was looking for.

He has longer hair, just shy of too long, flopping over his forehead in wild disarray. Everything else is the same though. He’s got the same sparkling almond eyes and his lips could easily turn up into that smirk he’d seen in the picture. More interesting to Derek are the moles though. They match the pattern of black spots he’d seen in his fox’s fur.

His name is Stiles. Stiles Stillinski and he’s a runaway from Beacon Hills.

Of course his is. Where else could a missing werefox with a penchant for stealing bacon possibly be from? If Derek believed more in fate or destiny, he would say he was meant to meet Stiles. He’s not that much of a romantic though, so he puts it down as a strange coincidence.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Derek asks.

Stiles is in some borrowed clothes that don’t really hang off his frame, but are obviously baggy on him. He looks more comfortable for it, curled up on the end of Derek’s couch. His slender fingers are wrapped around a mug of coffee that he’d made for himself just after he’d dressed. He’s thoughtful and hasn’t really been able to meet Derek’s eyes for more than a few moments at a time.

He stares at the dust specs that dance in the late afternoon sunlight, chewing his lower lip before he shrugs. “I didn’t want to be found. I thought if anyone knew who I really was, they’d call the cops and have me shipped back to Beacon Hills faster than you could say ‘runaway’.”

Derek doesn’t want to go back to Beacon Hills, so he can understand on some level. But he doesn’t want to go back because that’s where his entire family was murdered, brutally and without remorse. He doesn’t want to see the house. He doesn’t want to see the Preserve. He doesn’t want to walk around the town where all his memories with them are. The very idea sets his teeth on edge. 

It makes him wonder what Stiles could be running from.

“What happened back there that you don’t want to be found?”

Stiles takes a sip of his coffee, staying quiet for a long time. The bitter salt smell that Derek always associated with the fox grows sharper, his brows furrowing. Stress. It’s the scent of stress and fear. Derek almost can’t believe he took so long to recognize it. He’s always been good about differentiating between chemosignals, the smells they give off, but Stiles had been a fox and Derek never even thought to connect them.

“There was just some bad shit for a while before I left. My best friend was bitten by a crazy alpha. _I_ was bitten by a crazy alpha.” His fingers shift restlessly around the mug he holds. “A lot of people got hurt. And then hunters got involved. My dad ended up in a coma and I just…” He shakes his head. “I stayed long enough to help kill the alpha and then I left. I couldn’t deal with it.”

That. That, Derek understands.

He’s been running and hiding ever since his family burned to ashes thanks to his own stupidity. It all just became too much. Too much grief, too much struggle, too much everything. It’s why he’s out here and it makes sense that would be why Stiles is out here too.

Derek sighs, feeling awkward and unsure how to tell Stiles that he understands, or ask him what he plans to do. He’s too awkward to even really offer a hand on the shoulder, which is strange considering he’s petted Stiles while he was a fox.

“You think you can handle a run?” he asks instead and Stiles looks just as relieved as he feels.

***

The awkwardness last right up until that evening, after they’ve both showered and Stiles surprises Derek by making their dinner for them, a simple pork chop meal with curly fries that only takes about half an hour.

It’s good, and after, Derek retreats to the couch with a book he picked up last he was in town. Not that he actually reads any of it. He’s trying to give himself time, to formulate words and it’s more difficult than he expects considering he would talk to the fox all the time as if he was as human as Stiles really is.

Then Stiles flops onto the couch next to him in his usual spot, his limbs akimbo and taking up so much space that the fox really didn’t before. Derek can still see the animal in the motion even if his legs hang over the side. The most familiar part of it, though, is that Stiles just presses his head against Derek’s thigh and snuggles in.

Derek looks down at him, confused for a moment, and then the boy just pushes his head into his thigh. He makes a mess of his hair, making it stand on end as he stares off into the nothing of his living room and Derek…it just makes sense to drop his hand to his hair and pet through it. It’s as natural as breathing, as easy as shifting. He closes his book, settling it in his lap so he can look at the teenager who makes himself so comfortable against him with a small smile.

“Comfortable?” he asks, amused despite himself.

Stiles doesn’t even hesitate to slip his hand under Derek’s thigh, elevating it just enough for him as he nods. “Yeah. You make a surprisingly good pillow for being made of solid muscle. Just need a bigger couch now. Maybe a TV.”

Derek snorts inelegantly. “I just bought this couch.” And then he pauses as he realizes. “After you trashed my other one, you little shit!”

He doesn’t even have the good graces to pretend looking guilty. Stiles just looks up at him and gets this shit-eating grin on his face, snuggling closer to him without a single care in the world. It’s just about then that Derek realizes that afternoon is what sparked everything. That was when he started cleaning up around the cabin and sleeping in a real bed. That was when he started living.

Because Stiles shredded the living room.

“That other couch was nasty as shit, man, and you hardly fit on it. You hardly fit on this one but at least it has reclining seats,” Stiles replies, still completely unapologetic and maybe he shouldn’t be. Derek tries not to look around his couch to figure out how in the hell it could possibly recline while Stiles shrugs. “I know a lot about being stuck. Sometimes you need a push to get you moving again.”

Derek’s hand trails down the boy’s spine.

***

He doesn’t tell anyone about the runaway living in his cabin with him. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone poking their nose in his business while he still had Laura. He knows it’s not the same situation, that they were family, but he still respects Stiles’s choice not to go back. He would prefer Stiles stay with him where he’s safe and cared for rather than running again, getting caught or hurt by who knows what.

They cohabitate fairly well even when they’re both human. Stiles talks a lot. More than Derek thought he would be comfortable with, but Stiles never really expects him to participate in his one-sided conversations so it’s not as bad as it could be. The young man turns out to be fairly adept at cooking and the first time Derek goes for his biweekly trip to the store, he realizes how the curly fries ended up on his list. Stiles has perfectly mimicked his penmanship, forged his handwriting down the off balance dot over his ‘I’s.

Derek can definitely see why the bite turned him to a fox. He’s sneaky and tricky by his very nature. Maybe that shouldn’t make Derek smile, but he finds himself doing so regardless as he picks up the asparagus bundle that he never would have put on the list himself.

The only thing they have trouble with is their sleeping arrangements.

It seems that since the night Derek thought he was going to lose his fox and settled the injured were on his bed, Stiles now believes that he can hop his fluffy ass onto the left side of the bed. Derek has tried kicking him off, but even if Stiles stays on the ground or shifts back to his full human form, he still wakes up with a fox curled up in a ball against his left side. It’s infuriating…in and of the fact that he’s starting to get used to it.

***

He doesn’t see the other beta wolf or the woman he’d been with again, and he doesn’t ever bring it up to Stiles, not even when the boy gets into one of his quiet moods where he sits and stares off into nothing, face blank and scent rampant with remorse. Derek knows they must mean something to each other. No one travels that far looking for someone they don’t love. Beacon Hills is over three hundred miles away. That boy had to have known he was reaching for thin air when he came out.

The kind of love that drives dedication of that magnitude is something that can’t be trifled with and he’s as sure as the sky is blue that the boy who came to his home will continue to search for Stiles until the end of time. He thinks Stiles knows that too, not that he ever talks about who the wolf was or how they know each other. It just looms around him, and therefore around Derek.

Beacon Hills in general lingers in the air between them. It doesn’t take Derek much time at all to realize that Stiles knows exactly who he is and where he’s from. Even if the teenager never says as much, there’s this look in his eyes that Derek feels. It’s recognition. They both know the other is from Beacon Hills. They both know they’ve lost important parts of themselves to that town, but they never speak of it.

Derek wonders if they ever will.

***

“How did you learn how to do a full shift? That’s usually really difficult for a bitten were.” Derek asks one day while he’s installing the flat screen television over the fireplace. Well, Stiles is installing it. Derek is just holding it in place and looking bored.

He has discovered that Stiles is pretty handy with just about everything. He has a mind that can solve just about any problem and figure out the most complicated of instructions. Derek hates asking for help more than anything on earth, but there have already been a few times when he easily hands over the reins to Stiles, lets him deal with whatever conundrum has him stumped.

Stiles leans out from around the television, screw driver in his mouth and hair fluffed up from all the times he’s run his fingers through it. The look makes Derek smirk, ducking his head down so Stiles doesn’t see it. When he looks up again, Stiles shrugs and pulls the screw driver from his mouth.

“I dunno. Whenever Scott was turned, I did like…a shit ton of research. Not that there are forums or anything for were-creatures, but I found out that there’s sometimes a glimmer of truth in myths and fairy tales.” His tongue makes an appearance between his lips for a moment as he looks at what his hands are doing. “I don’t know what rabbit hole I fell down, but there was this thing about inner peace of something and I didn’t think much about it until after I was bitten.”

Derek hums to show he’s listening, which is pretty much the only thing he has to add to any conversation him and Stiles has. As long as he gives the teenager an ounce of his attention, he’ll keep going.

“When I _was_ bitten, I started immediately trying to get a grip on myself. I helped Scott find his anchor his first couple of weeks so I knew what to do in theory, but I didn’t have what Scott had so I kind of had to find my own way. I started doing what I always did, relying on my mind, my smarts to pull me through. There were facts that I kept going through and the last full moon I was there, after my dad went into the hospital, there was just this moment of clarity where all the facts that lead to where I was were clear as day…”

He pauses for a moment, everything about him slowing to a stop in a way that is entirely uncharacteristic of him. Even as a fox, Stiles is always a flurry of movement. His face slowly falls, going blank as he stares through the television in front of him. Derek watches him, hand suddenly itching to reach out and comfort.

“I have always been the fox,” Stiles murmurs. “The characteristics have always been inside me and when I was turned they were on the outside too. That day, I remember thinking: I am the fox; the fox is me. Next thing I knew I was trying to struggle my fluffy tail out of my clothes.” He shakes himself, shrugging as he returns to the television.

Picking up the screwdriver, he tightens the bolts to the stand.

“Inner peace is complete shit. I’m an anxious mess of ADHD and stress. I couldn’t have inner peace if my life depended on it. It’s just about acceptance.”

Derek thinks about that for a long moment, brows furrowed as Stiles finishes hooking up the television. They don’t have cable or anything like that, but Stiles had written down a few movies for Derek to pick up from the store and the town is fortunate enough to have a movie rental place. Derek has no plans to watch movies, but he supposes that the addition is homey and comfortable.

Stiles takes a step away from his work, hands on his hips where sweatpants are slung low under the borrowed shirt. Derek should make an effort to pick up some clothes for him, but he finds he doesn’t mind the scent of Stiles in his clothes. They take a seat on the couch, and Stiles curls up under a throw that had magically appeared.

After a moment Derek continues on with the topic. “If it’s about acceptance, then most born weres should be able to shift fully…”

The teenager looks at him, eyes wiser than they ever should be at his age. “It’s not about accepting the animal. It’s about accepting the human.”

***

Stiles cleans up the overgrown brush around the cabin and sprays for insects and spiders so they stay outside where they’re supposed to be. He also sneezes about a million times because the chemicals in the spray are apparently really strong to him. Derek tries not to laugh at him, but he really can’t help it.

Derek fixes the front steps and refinishes the planks on the front patio. He even installs a bench swing which Stiles quickly decides is his and his alone.

Together they trim the trees of dead branches or branches too close to powerlines and they chop the bigger branches for the fireplace while some of the smaller ones go toward the fire pit they both use. Stiles mows the yard, or what they deem is the yard considering the cabin is essentially settled in a clearing in the forest. They go wading through a creek, shoes off and pants rolled up so they can collect rocks to line the front porch with.

Inside, Derek fixes the stairs that squeak and replaces the banister so it doesn’t wiggle and it’s a bit more updated. Stiles paints the mudroom and the spare room, ordering fresh bedding from Amazon in a nice neutral color. Derek for a moment thinks that he’s going to take that room.

He doesn’t, preferring to sleep as a curled up fox pressed against Derek’s side.

They clear the dining room and refinish the table. Derek buys six new chairs and arranges everything on the freshly waxed flooring. He redoes the windows that he’d half-assed last fall and fixes one of the upstairs sinks so it actually has hot water again. 

Stiles reorganizes the office downstairs, going through the filing cabinets that not even Derek has looked at and cleaning out desk drawers of receipts, sorting different things out into a system that even Talia Hale would be proud of. He makes sense out of the chaos left behind, not just in the cabin, but in their lives.

***

Summer never really gets hot this far north. It says temperate enough to open the windows and relax as the breeze sweeps through the house and in the evenings it’s still chilly enough to need a blanket. Spring rains give way to summer showers, and the thunder echoes through the cabin while lightning pierces the skies.

The power is knocked out about halfway through the afternoon, which doesn’t really bother Derek as much as it bothers Stiles. The werefox had been halfway through a movie that he hadn’t seen due to him being a fox hiding from his life. There’d been a good twenty minute rant while Derek called the electric company from the ground line.

Derek has to make his great escape after the third frenzy Stiles spins himself into. He steps out onto the porch, which is mostly dry considering the steady rain that’s been pouring for the better part of three hours. He takes his book and reads until it’s too dark to see even with his keen eyesight. Then he just relaxes as the smell of spices and Italian sausage waft outside from the cabin.

About twenty minutes later, Stiles steps outside and curls up on the space on the other side of the swinging bench, head in Derek’s lap and feet hanging awkwardly over the wooden arm. The scent of restless energy has dissipated somewhat and now it’s obvious that Stiles is just tired and bored, which helps settle Derek himself. He’s becoming so attuned to the emotions from the other were that he tends to get irritable when Stiles is antsy.

He slides his fingers through Stiles’s too long hair, shaggy and curling around his ear. Stiles hates the length of it, but he’s against going to town for anything, even a haircut and a barber, Derek is not. It works out when they’re like this though, because Stiles loves being petted, fox or not, and Derek has found that he doesn’t mind one bit.

“I’m making soup,” Stiles murmurs, relaxing fully into his position, unaware or uncaring of how uncomfortable it should be. “It’s good soup weather, even if we can’t see it.”

Derek snorts. They can see just fine. He’s got camping lanterns tucked away for this reason exactly, and has one in the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom. It’s almost like having the lights dimmed and had Stiles not been so fidgety Derek probably would have carried on reading from the comfort of his couch.

“Shut up. It’s not that dark in the cabin.” He rubs his thumb against Stiles’s temple, feeling the fox go from relaxed to boneless in an instant. “Besides, you used to live in the woods. There isn’t exactly an overabundance of electricity there.”

Stiles just huffs in response to that, but he doesn’t offer a rebuttal. He doesn’t say anything at all for a while. They sit together in silence, listening to the rain fall and thunder rumble across the sky. The lightning is hidden inside the clouds by now, enough to light up the land and cast everything in black and white before it all filters back to darkness.

Between one rumble of thunder and the next, Derek hears Stiles, the quiet confession. “The alpha was your uncle…”

Derek takes a deep breath and releases it slowly, but his hand never stops sliding through Stiles’s hair. He hadn’t known entirely, but he thinks in the back of his mind he always suspected. He’d hadn’t felt that thready connection in years, but somehow… “I know.”

***

One night Stiles doesn’t even bother shifting into a fox before he crawls into Derek’s bed with him. He doesn’t shift and he doesn’t wait until Derek’s asleep. He also doesn’t come into the room like he usually does, with the arrogance of someone who’s used to getting his way, either by coercion or sheer determination.

He hovers outside the doorway for a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to another, obviously debating with himself. Derek’s sure that the fox knows he’s awake. Stiles probably hears his heart beating just a little too fast to be asleep. It’s no different that Derek being able to smell the grief on him. It’s just knowledge.

Derek props himself up on his elbow, meeting Stiles’s eyes across the small distance between them. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong, because he knows what’s wrong. It’s why Stiles never asks him what’s wrong with him when he gets irrationally angry or broody. They don’t talk about it often, but they talk enough, in quiet moments when a movie plays and Derek reads his book, during late nights when they can’t quite sleep, or during the full moons when it’s just the two of them. The arc of their pain is visible and tied to each other with tender threads, binding them together.

A beat passes and then another, but nothing more than that. Stiles makes his way around to the left side of the bed and the next thing Derek knows, there’s a teenage boy pressed up against his side, eyes shiny in the darkness of his room. Hands tangle in his tank top, clawing with quiet desperation even after Derek wraps his arm around his waist. 

“I know I have to go back,” Stiles whispers. “I just don’t know if I can ever face them again. Scott and Melissa…I left them behind without a backwards glance. I left my dad and my prom date in the hospital. We killed the alpha and I…I just left them all. I’m scared they’ll never forgive me.”

Derek rubs Stiles’s back, sure short strokes up his back and then a sweeping motion back down again. What he wouldn’t give to be able to beg forgiveness for every stupid thing he’s ever done in his life.  What he wouldn’t give to have a family to go back to. He takes a deep breath, resting his cheek against Stiles’s head. “You can’t be forgiven if you don’t go back.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, his lashes brushing against Derek’s neck as his hands tighten in the fabric of his shirt.

He can feel the question coming before Stiles even asks it, like electricity moving along his skin, something awful and kinetic.

“Will you come with me?”

***

There was a period after the fire when going back to Beacon Hills would make him physically ill. The first time Laura mentioned it, he’d spent all night locked up in a Texas hotel’s bathroom throwing up everything he’d eaten that day and then some. The very idea of seeing his home, the friends he’d had…the thought that Kate might still be there, it had all overwhelmed him.

When he felt Laura die, it had only cemented his resolve never to go back to that horrible place. Every part of him rebelled at the very idea, especially when her last message to him had been to stay away. He’d been sure that Beacon Hills would only ever play the same broken record of agony and grief for him.

But then comes this little werefox who can mask his scent and destroys his furniture, who uses trickery and cunning to move around his house without ever leaving a footprint. He comes in and he turns Derek’s miserable, lonely existence and fills it with color and light, turning each day into something worth getting up for in the morning. He comes in and Derek starts living again.

It’s to the point where the idea of watching Stiles leave feels like watching his world turn bland and gray again.

Suddenly the idea of Beacon Hills doesn’t warrant such a drastic response, though his heart still picks up and his nerves fill his stomach. The idea of being without Stiles is what makes him nauseous and he doesn’t care if that makes them horribly codependent. He doesn’t care what that says about him that he’s twenty-one and relying on a just freshly turned seventeen year old to give him life meaning.

Derek needs Stiles and Stiles wants him to come with.

He only thinks about it for one day before he calls a real estate agent.

***

They load up all the boxes from the shed and pack up the pictures, books, and trinkets from the cabin halfway through summer. The cabin has been fixed up, made livable and inviting, and Derek plans to rent it out to whoever might have need for it. He figures it would be good for the holidays, but people might want it as a vacation get away spot.

That’s what his family used it as after all.

When Derek loads up the last box, he turns to find Stiles sitting on the porch swing, holding the green quilt that he’d brought down for Derek in the very beginning. He’s looking around with a small smile and a vaguely nostalgic expression on his face as he rocks back and forth. Derek wonders for a moment what he’s seeing, but it becomes pretty clear after a moment, because he can see it too. He sees all their progress in this cabin, all the healing they’ve done.

Putting the cabin back together has been like putting themselves back together.

Where it had been broken down and lonely before, it’s now whole and peaceful.

Derek smiles softly as he hops up the steps, dropping himself into the seat beside Stiles and draping his arm along the back behind him. He looks out across the clearing with him, up at the porch roof that they’d fixed a few weeks ago. Through the windows where dark red drapes kept people from looking in.

He’s hired a maintenance company to come out once every two weeks to make sure that the place is taken care of while no one is there. They’ll keep up with the mowing and weeding and make sure the cabin is dusted and swept. The rest he’ll keep up with through the security system he had installed just a few days ago.

“I’m gonna miss this place,” Stiles confesses, quiet and wistful. “I liked fixing it up with you.”

Derek curls his arm around Stiles’s shoulder, pulling him a little closer. “We can always come back and visit if we need to. We can come back during fall break, even. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.

“I know. Just weird to say goodbye to it. I know I was only here a few months, but it’s become a part of me almost the same way Beacon Hills is. It’s home.”

He presses his lips together, like he just admitted something he hadn’t necessarily meant to, looking at Derek with his expressive eyes that were always too intelligent. He looks uncharacteristically vulnerable, the way he hasn’t since the night he first shifted back into his human skin. Derek searches him, feeling a small smile grow on his face.

“I don’t think the cabin was a home so much as the person in it,” he admits in return. “This place…it was just therapy, in a way. Fixing it with you fixed me, helped me heal more than I was letting myself before.”  He nods, sure of his words the way he never was before. “You’re my home.”

Stiles smiles, a rush of pink on his cheeks the vulnerability melts away. The fingers of one hand fiddle restlessly with the quilt for a moment and then he’s cupping Derek’s jaw and tugging him close. Derek could have seen this coming a million miles away, but it doesn’t take away from the enormity of it when Stiles leans in and kisses him, simple and unsophisticated. Derek gets the idea that maybe Stiles hasn’t kissed many people but it’s still the most perfect thing he’s ever felt because it’s Stiles and Derek loves him so damn much.

When he leans back, Stiles’s cheeks are darker and he looks quite pleased with himself.

It makes Derek smile even wider.

*** 

There’s a plot of land in Beacon Hills. There’s nothing particularly special about it. The house is a little run down and it’s going to be more of a bitch to get it up and running than it would have been had he just bought a place.

The grass is overgrown and the door hangs funny. The roof leaks and there’s a gaping hole in the bathroom upstairs where the toilet needs to go. Everything inside needs to be redone and updated. It’s going to be months before everything is put together. Maybe years.

Derek takes Stiles there at the end of the day, when they’ve seen the Sheriff and Scott and Melissa, after they’ve cried and yelled and hugged, after Scott punches Derek in the face for hiding Stiles. Derek takes him there when the werefox is worn thin and exhausted and curled up in the passenger seat with his head against the window. He takes him there because the house looks as wrecked and abandoned as their lives in Beacon Hills are.

When Stiles sees it, a small smile curls one side of his lips, like he knows exactly why Derek picked this place.

They would rebuild this house. 

They would make it stronger and better than before the way they did with the cabin.

**Author's Note:**

> a tod is a male fox. i googled it and it was the name i liked best. 
> 
> gekkering is actually a word. it's the sound a fox makes when either fighting or playing. it's kind of chittering sound and hopefully the link below works so you can hear it.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHZ201aLX0
> 
> i never really specify where this story takes place, so i'm gonna be really helpful and say that it's in a general northern-ish direction where it snows a lot and stays cooler year round. hope that clears everything up. 
> 
> i do have it in my head that the sheriff was hurt in an altercation after stiles was turned so he feels hella guilty about that. also chris killed peter so no one is the alpha in beacon hills...yet, of course.


End file.
